Overview

Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities examines the ways in which divide-and-conquer strategies operate in the American public education system. In U.S. education, these mechanisms are endemic and enduring, if not always evident. Coordinated, strategic, well-funded, politically-viable campaigns continue to stoke fear, othering, villainization, and dehumanization of minoritized groups, pushing false and problematic narratives that inhibit progress toward social justice. Weaponizing hegemony and leveraging misinformation, reactionary agents and institutions seek to suppress truth, block access to democratic participation, and dismantle education and other sites of emancipatory possibility through the strength of divide-and-conquer mechanisms, pitting relatively disempowered groups against one another to preserve the dominant social order. Readers of this book will encounter conceptual and critical interrogations of divide and conquer. The text will help facilitate inquiry and engagement into how divide and conquer operates and how it can be resisted. It looks at the history of the phenomenon, as well as its current state, especially as it relates to education. What insights and lessons might we learn from a focused examination of divide and conquer, and what strategies of resistance are both possible and necessary for challenging it? This text is designed for undergraduate and graduate classrooms in education and social sciences. Part I, Ideology and Sociopolitical Contexts, dissects how divide-and-conquer mechanisms operate ideologically and sociopolitically. Part II, Policies and Practices, focuses on how divide-and-conquer mechanisms shape exclusionary U.S. educational policies and practices. Part III, Resistance and Liberation, documents efforts of liberatory communicative, curricular, and pedagogical possibilities. Each chapter concludes with a set of critical questions for reflection and engagement. Perfect for courses such as: Foundations of Education; Schools and Society; Schooling in America; History of Education; Philosophy of Education; Sociology of Education; Social Studies; Critical Theory in Education.

Full Product Details

9781975505967

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Education is constantly used as a divisive political battlefield. Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities shows us that critical solidarities are the only way forward in these troubling and polarized times. This is an excellent book that will help educators more deeply understand the issues they are facing on a daily basis.""--Wayne Au, Professor, University of Washington School of Educational Studies, Editor, ""Rethinking Schools"" ""Rudnick has put together a fine collection of authors in Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities, whose chapters complicate the unicausal theories of oppressions and instead call for capacious and engaged intersectional work in resistance. At a time when CRT bans are instituted by the same forces that constrain curriculum on language diversity and LGBTQ + issues and restrict transgender people's access to medical care and women's access to reproductive freedom, it is all the more important for educators to keep the multiple vectors of oppression and resistance clearly in mind and action: this collection provides important educational impetus for that work.""--Cris Mayo, Professor and Vice Chair, Dept. of Education, Director, Interdisciplinary Studies in Education M. Ed., University of Vermont ""This is a timely and important book essential to understanding our growing authoritarian and fascist political environment and how to resist it. Dennis Rudnick's edited volume offers an array of scholars who provide thoughtful, real-world examples of how divide-and-conquer strategies further balkanize America. Resisting Divide-and-Conquer Strategies in Education: Pathways and Possibilities provides a critical framework for helping us understand the multifaceted ways in which division and exclusion are legally institutionalized in American society while offering counternarratives for enhancing a more inclusive, intersectional, and socially just democracy. This is a must-read for anyone interested in education, the social sciences, cultural diversity, and policy.""--Brian W. Dotts, Professor, University of Georgia"

Author Information

Dr. Dennis L. Rudnick is an Assistant Professor of Education at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He has over 25 years of experience as an educator, researcher, administrator, facilitator, program developer, consultant, and public speaker on multicultural, civil rights, and social justice issues. Dr. Rudnick formerly served as an Assistant Professor and Dean's Diversity Fellow at Missouri State University, and Associate Director of Multicultural Education and Research at Indiana University Purdue University-Indianapolis. Dr. Rudnick's research focuses on the relationships between identity, ideology, socialization, knowledge construction and their impacts on White anti-oppressive teacher identity development. Recent scholarship includes ""The Least Racist White Person in the Room,"" published in Unhooking from Whiteness (3rd ed.); ""Dilemmas in Asynchronous Multicultural Teacher Education From a Relational Pedagogy Perspective,"" published in the Handbook of Research on Opening Pathways for Marginalized Individuals in Higher Education; and ""Walking on Egg Shells: Colorblind Ideology and Race Talk in Teacher Education,"" published in Multicultural Education Review.

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